“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings”
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John F. Kennedy
“Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art.”
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John F. Kennedy
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
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John F. Kennedy
“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”
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John F. Kennedy
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“The new and terrible dangers which man has created can only be controlled by man.”
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John F. Kennedy
“Of course, it would be much easier if we could all continue to think in traditional political patterns—of liberalism and conservatism, as Republicans and Democrats, from the viewpoint of North and South, management and labor, business and consumer or some equally narrow framework. It would be more comfortable to continue to move and vote in platoons, joining whomever of our colleagues are equally enslaved by some current fashion, raging prejudice or popular movement. But today this nation cannot tolerate the luxury of such lazy political habits. Only the strength and progress and peaceful change that come from independent judgment and individual ideas—and even from the unorthodox and the eccentric—can enable us to surpass that foreign ideology that fears free thought more than it fears hydrogen bombs. We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves.”
―
John F. Kennedy
“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free
―
John F. Kennedy
